The Saga of Lost Earths Read online

  Lemminkainen's eyes widened when the drunken crone suddenly waved the silver sword Ilmarinen had created. It caught the candleflames so that his eyes were dazzled, and a pang of defeat stabbed his stomach. His signal to the captive slaves was to have been Aiile proving their valor by having purloined it out of the warriors’ arms room. And now, there it was clutched firmly in Louhi's vulture-claw.

  He sang of blood, of wild furious battles, of portent and doom. Song followed song. While he sang his mind raced. The longer he sang, the more the demons would drink and the more abandoned and careless Louhi's warriors and guards would become. There would be more time, too, for the slaves to prepare their revolt and steal weapons. Perhaps kill off a drunk guard here and there.

  Midsummer's night was a time for folly.

  Let it be Witch Louhi's.

  He found that his glance was pulled time and again to the black shadow—the nothing-seeming that was Keitolainen. One of the other guests had a wolf's head, another that of a strange scarlet bird. Masks? Lemminkainen was far from sure. But none was so strange and terrifying as—Nothing.

  A vacuum in space, reserved for the three-dimensional shadow of a hideously tall, monstrously shaped alien who had found a way to cast his shadow across time and space and substance, to this dismal island of Pohyola from Tuonela.

  His brain denied the notion that such a distortion as this could exist; unable to send it back across the vast space-sea to where it belonged, Lemminkainen felt his hackles rise and icy snakes caress his spine.

  “Sing!” Louhi screamed, when he stopped. “Sing about love! Inspire our bride, and her groom!"

  A torrent of despair overtook him. He must overcome it! Cast it off! Sing it away!

  “None among the wizard's mighty,

  None of those whose souls are blackest,

  Whom he did not move to weeping,

  Tears unbidden claimed the singer, even he, the minstrel hero."

  Lemminkainen flung emotions at them, as if, swept along by the very depth of his own poignant agony, even those evil creatures would succumb. Perhaps some did. But the shadow called Keitolainen the Contemptible only grew larger, so that it filled that whole side of the hall, floor to laurel-wreathed rafters.

  Louhi cackled and flung out spittle from her toothless gums. This she doted on: Lemminkainen's misery made vocal.

  “Drink!” she screamed. “Sing happy songs, minstrel! For the bride!” She waved at her slave-attendants. “Now, bring in the bride!"

  Lemminkainen gasped.

  Silia was dressed in shining gold cloth, gold that encased her curves in a glittering cascade. Her raven hair hung demurely to her shoulders, on it was a bride's headdress set with brilliant stones. Behind her were four handmaidens, all in virgin white. Then came the mock priest, tall, hawkfaced, wearing a long cloak that looked to have been dipped in fresh bullock's blood. All to the crashing of cymbals.

  The priest took his place in front of the long table.

  Silia's face was white as marble; she moved as if there were small wheels under that long golden wedding gown; she seemed resigned to anything at this point, soul-stricken.

  Keitolainen moved, too, like a great dark wing.

  The cymbals were silent.

  The monster priest motioned for his attendants to bring up a brazier. He flung powders into it and dark smoke shuddered out of the flames, smoke with strange faces that changed shape and color while the priest chanted.

  All eyes were on this evilness, and on the beautiful bride with her shadowy groom. Lemminkainen wrenched his eyes away. He leaped back into the pillared shadows. Things were different in the performers’ alcove now; it was crowding up with slaves, and each slave carried some kind of a weapon, if he had but a strap of harnessing with an iron buckle, or a sharpened meat hook from the larder.

  Aiile was among them, fear-white, but smiling.

  All the grim faces, crowding silently in and down hall, looked to Lemminkainen for the signal.

  The hero nodded, hand signaling: Wait. He prowled along the tapestries to the closest point he could get to the table without being seen. The priest was still chanting, the guests tittering gleefully at this eldritch sport; through the drumming of tambors, now, and jingling of bells, Louhi's, cackle of triumph ran like an evil thread.

  He held up his hand for those behind him. Then, in an urgent flash his mind told Silia: I am here. I will save you.

  For the first time Silia made a sound. It was only a sharp sob, but Carl knew she had heard him. This was the moment of stress when minds touch across some fourth dimension where they drift, in truth.

  Carl! They told me they had killed you! I didn't care any more. Now God! I see him! I ... I think I'm goin to-"

  He heard her sobbing sigh as she crumpled; now Lemminkainen gave the slaves the signal. He leaped out, then onto the end of the tables in one great cat's bound. Trenchers and beer mugs scattered in his path.

  Louhi rose when she saw him; she loosened a wild screech and scrambled her claw for the silver sword. Her serpent stick hissed and struck at Lemminkainen's arm when he reached for the sword. The drooling fangs missed by a fraction in time. Lemminkainen had it, and, in a reflexive lunge rammed it at the witch's throne. It slashed oak, only. Louhi was vanished.

  By now the unleashed fury of the captive slaves was turning the stone floor of the great hall into a slippery sea of blood. Even the powers of star-spawned demons such as these faltered under the hero-inspired flood of disbelief in them. Long enough. Sluggish from overfeeding, muddy-brained with drink, the sorcerers forgot their lines, and died.

  “Silia!"

  Lemminkainen stopped lopping off heads to whirl and leap, when he heard her scream. The cadaverous red-cloaked priest blocked his way. Ilmar's silver magic whipped out; the cloak took on new blood and crumpled.

  But an awesome horror was taking place.

  Keitolainen's shadow was withdrawing, diminishing, melting back into his substance, and taking Silia with him. Sucking her through the spinning vortex with him. The red priest's incantations were not just mock-play, after all. They had opened the way, changed Silia's vibratory pattern, made it possible for Keitolainen the Contemptible to drag her home with him, like a reluctant bride.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV

  WHILE Lemminkainen stared, animal groans bubbling in his throat, the witch hag snapped back to view. She threw back her head and laughed. When the hero's sword tip dimpled the hollow in her throat she only shrugged.

  “You cannot kill me, Lemminkainen. Not even with Ilmarinen's sword."

  He glanced around. “Your slaves are slaying the other wizards along with your warriors, Hag. You are finished!"

  The witch cackled and vanished. Now she was seated on a rafter over his head.

  “As to my guests, “she shrugged. “Most of them are simulacra. Star-demons die not easily."

  Lemminkainen's veins froze. Deep within him, he knew old Louhi, ancient enemy of the three heroes, was right. The revolt of her captives was a temporal thing; they would escape from the dismal Island Pohyola, indeed, and live their lives, fishing and farming. They would marry and produce offspring, offspring who might be snatched off by ageless witch's myrmidons to become her chattel in some distant time. Legends do not die. Time is a fallacy. Louhi, the Hag of the Rock would cross minds again.

  “Where is Kyllikki?” he demanded.

  “You mean Silia,” Louhi spat contemptuously. “Mortals, even heroes, have a lot to learn, with their machines and their pretensions. Know you not Carl Lempi—yet?"

  Lemminkainen scowled and swore. The old witch was trying to confuse him, split his mind power. The name she spoke rankled like a burr in his boot but he thrust it aside.

  “Where is she?"

  “Tuonela, of course. With her husband. Although what Keitolainen wishes of a wheyface uuti I cannot grasp. Hiisi and his Pahaliset have strange needs."

  “Such as?"

  Louhi shrugged. “I ask no questions
of Hiisi, nor he of me. We have a fine symbiotic relationship."

  “What are these strange uuti words?"

  Louhi cackled slyly. “Ask Carl."

  Lemminkainen whirled fiercely to aid a youthful plow slave in trouble with three hairy-chested guards who had wrenched out of their drunken slumbers. He slashed one's brutal head so that it lopped grotesquely before he toppled; thrust his well-sung blade into a second's gullet, while the field slave finished off the third with the plowshare blade he had long nurtured to his bosom, honing it to a fine edge.

  Lemminkainen wondered idly if any of Louhi's small army would join up with the slaves, and guessed not. They had been brain-burned to serve the witch and death was the only answer for them. The slaves were doing a thorough job of it; tyranny had begot a rare thirst for blood. Even those whipmasters lying dead drunk in the halls never wakened to wield their lashes across the slaves’ backs more.

  “I will go across the dark sea to Tuonela and fetch Silia back! She is mine!"

  “Go, by all means,” Louhi cackled. ‘Take my fastest steed, Valkea. Join your Silia in the hell-pot!"

  Louhi of Pohyola vanished, smiling. Her vengeance was complete, after all.

  Lemminkainen found the handsome mare, Valkea, prancing and tromping, in her special stall in the horse barn. He flung the ornate golden bridle and the crimson saddle pad on her and led her out of the barn. The slaves were by now drunk with their own heroic efforts and their victory, and with liquors, as well. Already they had fired the stables and their vermin-infested sleep hall; Lemminkainen leaped on Valkea and quit the downsloping courtyard where he, too, had slaved, with skyborne flames at his back.

  He looked down at the flaming fields of barley and rye, crops which these same slaves with the rampant torches had sown and cared for with such loving hands; he swore to see lambs and bullocks run hither and thither in screaming panic. They, too, must die to assuage the captive slaves’ uncorked fury.

  Traditionally, Midsummer's night in the northland was the time for madness. This was madness indeed.

  Lemminkainen turned his eyes away, gave the reins a sharp tug. Valkea reared up on her hind legs, gave a small scream, and set off like a bolt of white fire through the forest. Louhi, the sly crone, had already whispered into the steed's ear where to take Lemminkainen.

  From the wild tumbled hills a crow cawed heartbreak.

  Tuonela. Death's kingdom. Land of bittersweet song. The end.

  While Valkea's hooves pounded beneath him, and the purple mists thickened, Time rebelled its plodding course. Lemminkainen's mind pushed him in one direction—the direction of doom. They moved into strange gorges between cliffs that touched alien suns; Lemminkainen once had the throat-burning sensation of great thirst, so that Valkea led him to a chuckling spring and they both slaked their thirst. But the need for Silia was far greater, so that it hung across the hero's whole being as the mists hung over their hidden trail.

  The madness of Midsummer had overtaken him, as well as Tapio's creatures and the elements themselves. Lemminkainen's brain seemed to burst with a yearning to scatter itself to the star-suns, to become knowingly a part of all that exists.

  This, then, was death? This—at the final moment of truth—at the crossover to Tuonela?

  It was freezing cold, his hands were without feeling on the jeweled reins. His other senses had frozen, too, for he could not even hear the wind, nor see color.

  Valkea stopped abruptly. Lemminkainen could not hear her scream that she would go no further but he felt the vibration of her shuddering muscles under him.

  With much effort he slid off. His boots made no sound that he could hear; his hand, resting on Valkea's snowy flank, felt the wild agitation when she shook her beautiful head and shrieked soundless terror, before she wheeled and bolted.

  Lemminkainen stood there, like an ash tree, looking but not seeing, listening but not hearing.

  The vortex was there. The rift between matter and antimatter. The place where the microcosm and macrocosm come full circle. The looking glass place.

  “Silia?” He didn't know whether he spoke her name or only in his mind.

  No answer.

  Silence. It was as if something were at work, as if Hiisi's lessers were turning on some strange alien machine which would permit him to cross the black swan's legend-lake. They were doing this while Lemminkainen's mind and his senses were preparing him.

  He tried to see. He strained. Now he was in the center of a whirling chaos, shrinking toward an apex In which rushed to meet the vortex Out.

  At this point the flesh that was Lemminkainen died.

  * * *

  PART FOUR

  OF TUONELA

  “Many there indeed have ventured,

  Few indeed have wandered homeward,

  From the dread abode of Hiisi-

  From the midnight land of Tuoni..."

  Kalevala: Runo XVI

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  CARL WOKE regretfully from his hero's dream. It had been so detailed, so actual. He could still hear the echo of Witch Louhi's mocking cackle, feel the strong muscles of Valkea between his thighs, responding to his lightest pressures and whispered commands.

  Back to boredom, he sighed. Back to the hospital-clean world of the Psychs.

  Then he opened his eyes.

  The sky over his head was deep orange, in that range of the spectrum. There were stars, yes, but they were strange stars, and a moon that was blue, like in the old song. He gaped around him. He lay on red grass and a pool of water nearby was sulphur yellow and reflected black clouds. Billowy cirrocumulus clouds without a drop of wet in them. Hardly, anyway.

  He grabbed hold of his head and pressed in from both sides. Nothing changed.

  Memories came, lagging at first, then leaping into full bloom, four-dimensional pictures on his brain. The three of his world, and time. Dr. Enoch. The weary northward plunge by dog sledge, by foot. They stopped short at the pine forest's rim when he yanked open the flap on Silia's tent and found her gone.

  He leaped to his feet. Every muscle in his long body screamed in abuse. He limped along the edge of what turned out not to be a small pond, but a wide yellow lake; gradually he managed to put his mind in some order.

  Dr. Enoch had said:

  You must become a true hero, for only a fierce, indomitable hero can save our world and himself.

  Ilmar, the smith, had warned: Like metal wrenched from the earth and blasted by fire, those who go to Tuonela are recast. They can no longer live among men.

  Lemminkainen and his slavery in Pohyola under the Witch Louhi, Carl remembered only as a misty dream, too wild to have any reality. He screwed up his face in chagrin and distaste. Yes. That part had been a crazy dream, in spite of Lemminkainen's mind-push into Tuonela and Louhi's all too willing help getting him there.

  “Silia!” he cried.

  He had a mission, a vital mission to perform. To save his world from an invading Force that had thrust itself into his warfree world with strange purpose, using the long buried Finnish Rare Earth as a vehicle.

  “I'm in fine shape to save anybody, even myself,” he told the silence. His voice rushed across the arch of orange sky and the yellow lake like crackling thunder.

  Standing there, straining to see across the glass-smooth expanse of liquid, Carl shivered under the impact of futility. He had blundered. They had asked him to go to Finland and find out what was causing the suicides. He had found out quite a lot; instead of crashing ahead on his own, letting whatever the Force was take Silia, perhaps destroy her as a menace to whatever the plan was behind all this, he ought to have gone back to Helsinki, delivered his report, let PsychHead take it from there.

  His sudden weight of despair added a repulsion toward the hero myths; his identification with Lemminkainen was suddenly embarrassing and impossible. Ilmatar, Creatrix of the Universe, was a childish sham. Ilmarinen, Vainomoinen, Louhi, the whole kaboodle of them were suddenly Alice's pack of cards,
cardboard dreams, spinning away into infinity. With a cry he whipped off Ilmar's sword and flung it as far as he could across the yellow lake.

  And this weird inside-out landscape was real.

  Squinting his eyes across the lake he detected a faint broken line on the other side. Like oddly shaped buildings, a city.

  He squatted, put a hand out toward the smooth liquid. It was not water. It was viscous, dense, and the angry sulphurous color looked actively dangerous.

  It doesn't like me.

  Carl shivered. The flash of knowledge struck like lightning, then pushed up a tight grin. That was like the Finns and their songs. Vesting the elements with personalities. The new Carl Lempi scorned such ideas. He disbelieved.

  To prove it he pushed his hand down into the liquid. “Hey!"

  The viscous substance rolled away a fraction of an inch from his hand. It wouldn't allow his hand to touch it. It left a cushion of air like a glove between itself and Carl's flesh. He tried both hands, then jammed a boot down into it. It wouldn't permit contact.

  “Maybe it's alive,” he scowled. “Not like Tapio, the forest or Etelatar, the South Wind. But sentient, some wild lifeform of this dimension, that can't allow itself to be touched. Well!"

  He straightened up, pulled in a sharp gulp of the warm metallic-pungent air, and stepped forward briskly. When he stepped down the yellow stuff leaped aside. Step after step.

  “Hope it's not too deep."

  It wasn't. The slope was easy and gradual, the unfriendly creature never quite took him to a depth below breathing level. A couple times he started to panic, sloughing his way through the sprawling entity, but his high esp insisted he could make it and nagged him on. It took a while to accept the notion that the creature's natural repugnance for him would keep it off no matter how fast he walked. One thing he couldn't do was sit down and rest. If he allowed It to cover his head he would die from lack of oxygen.

  He gritted his teeth and pushed on for two earth hours that seemed more like ten. The thin black line of city where It ended grew wider and took on a shape; exotic non-euclidean shape. But it was obviously a city and if Silia was still alive she was probably there. Trudging, he tried for esp contact with her. Nothing.